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Friday, May 1, 2009

This piece from CNN was horribly upsetting. Here's a few quotes from it. You really should go read the whole thing, though. The author talks about why she couldn't stand the thought of having a daughter.

Even before I had sons, I worried about having a daughter. I could handle boys, with their cut-and-dried needs, but girls were so much more complicated. Girls have elaborate hairstyling requirements. They whine and mope, manipulate and triangulate. How was I going to deal with that?

and

I know not all girls are like this -- sugar and spice and Hannah Montana. My own niece provides a compelling dirt-under-her-fingernails counter example. Plus, I can choose not to expose my daughter to the pink princess world in the first place.

But having already had two children, I've learned that you can't control their hardwiring. If she wants to be a princess, that's what she'll be. I don't allow toy weapons in the house -- which just means that my boys blithely improvise sippy-cup shootouts and remote-control duels to the death.

I find it hard to understand how much women can insult other women (or girls in this case) on the basis of sex. Does she think she was hard to raise? Does she wish her parents had had a boy instead of her so they'd have had an easier time?

I cannot read that article. I can tell already how much it will hurt. Girls MANIPULATE?!?!?! And WHINE? And MOPE?!?! Is she serious? Boys never do that, of course. And female children couldn't possibly be testing out the emotional Survival Skills they'll need to practice regularly in Patriarchy, where their needs always come secondary to male needs. No, that's not possible.